As I stepped toward Cynnia and Shelly, I leaned forward, my arms wrapped around my middle. The grass under my feet curled and turned black. I was a walking flame, and I needed the naturi’s help to find a way to extinguish myself.
“Help me,” I gasped, kneeling on the ground before them. “I can’t stop it. The power.
It’s inside of me. Running through my brain.”
“Let it go, Mira,” Shelly said, placing a hand on my shoulder, but quickly pulled it away and stumbled back a step. I knew she must have felt the charge of energy burning away inside of me, searching for an outlet. She shook her hand and stared at me in wonder.
The power continued to grow inside me, and the trees surrounding the plateau burst into flames like dry tinder too close to a crackling fire. A circle of fire sprang up around us, reaching more than six feet into the air.
“Mira!” Danaus called, sounding worried. I could barely feel him on the periphery of my mind, waiting until he had no choice but to intervene. In the past he had pushed his own powers into me, which in turn pushed out the powers of the earth. But considering the energy and pain burning through me then, I wasn’t sure that he would be strong enough to help me take control again.
“You have to release the energy, Mira,” Cynnia calmly said. “You have to send it back out of your body and into the earth.”
“Don’t you think I’ve been trying to do that?” I shouted, my voice broken and fractured under the weight of the growing pain. “I push against the energy with everything that I’ve got and my only outlet is to create fire, but it’s not enough. I would have to set the world ablaze for it to finally be enough.”
“Why is the energy getting stuck?” Shelly asked. I looked up to find her staring down at Cynnia, who was frowning at me.
“Because she’s a nightwalker,” the naturi softly murmured. The pounding of the energy and the crackle of the fire made it nearly impossible for me to hear her. But then it wasn’t her words that unnerved me so much, it was her tone. “She doesn’t have an outlet for the earth magic to flow through. The fire magic, that little bit of who she is, seems to be drawing it in, and it has nowhere else to go but to leave her through fire. She needs an outlet for the earth.”
“How?”
Instead of answering, Cynnia knelt before me and reached over to one of the knives in its sheath on my waist. She slowly unsnapped the safety strap and placed a restraining hand on my shoulder as she pulled the knife out of its sheath. She met my gaze, her wide eyes swimming with fear. “Please don’t let them kill me,” she whispered, then plunged the dagger into my heart.
Just as quickly, she jerked the knife out again and let it and me fall to the ground. I hit with a heavy thud as new pain radiated through my entire body. The fire around us was extinguished with a sudden whoosh, and both Stefan and Danaus were on Cynnia in a flash, while Shelly stood in the background gasping for air. I lay on the ground, feeling the blood flow out of me and into the grass beneath my chest, and with it, the power of the earth finally flowing out of me.
I turned my head enough so there was no long grass sticking into my mouth. “Don’t hurt Cynnia,” I murmured, speaking as loud as I could. Luckily, I was dealing with creatures with superb hearing.
“She tried to kill you!” Stefan argued, sounding like he was standing somewhere above me.
“She saved me,” I said, wincing as Danaus helped turn me over on my back. A puncture wound to the heart couldn’t kill a nightwalker, but it could definitely slow us down.
Nothing short of decapitation or the total removal of the heart would kill a nightwalker. As well as immolation, but that fate wasn’t for me.
Laying in Danaus’s lap, I closed my eyes and focused on the different energies I could now feel in, around, and through me. There was the soul, or so-called blood energy, that made up my existence. It was cool and calming, filling me as it mended the wound in my heart.
Danaus’s powers also flowed about me, cautious and worried, but not seeking entrance into my weakened frame. He hovered on the outside, waiting for an invitation, or at the very least, a sign that I wasn’t healing as he expected.
And I could now feel the earth’s power, warm and light, flowing up from beneath me.
The energy pulsed around me and through me as if it had its own heartbeat. The power seemed to flow out of me just as quickly as it flowed in, as if recognizing that it had wandered into a dead creature.
“Mira?” Stefan demanded in his cold voice, drawing me back to the present and the dilemma at hand.
I opened my eyes to find him holding Cynnia by her hair, a knife blade pressed so close to her throat that a thread of blood was streaming down her neck. I paused for a moment to wonder if we still needed her alive. She had fixed my problem with the earth magic, and I had a feeling that Shelly could now teach me to use that earth magic. I also suspected that keeping Cynnia alive wouldn’t provide me with enough leverage over Rowe to stop him from performing the sacrifice. For that, I had to rely on Nyx.
“I wasn’t trying to kill you!” Cynnia cried when I had yet to move. “You needed a tie to the earth. Nightwalkers lose their tie when they are reborn. Your allegiance is based solely on soul magic and the bori.”
Beneath me, I felt Danaus flinch inwardly at the mention of the bori, but he didn’t move or say a word. The hunter and I still had a few things to discuss about our respective origins, but now was not the time.
“So, blood straight from my heart poured into the earth opened my connection to the earth again,” I said, letting my eyes fall shut as I tried to gather my strength. The wound had not been too deep and for the most part had already healed. Unfortunately, the earlier fight, the tug-of-war between the two energies, and the blood loss, had left me exhausted and in need of a fresh meal. “It was a lucky guess,” I murmured, one half of my mouth quirking in a smile.
“It was not a guess!” she gasped.
“Stefan, you can release her. She didn’t kill me,” I said in a weary voice. I opened my eyes to find Cynnia rubbing her neck, her right hand covered in my blood.
“It wasn’t entirely a guess,” she admitted with a sour look. “I knew you needed a way to give your blood back to the earth. We needed to open the gateway. I was just hoping it wouldn’t kill you in the process.”
I choked on a laugh, allowing my eyes to fall shut. With a sigh, I scanned the area around me out of habit, keeping a so-called eye on everyone during my weakened state. I realized something odd then. I felt Cynnia move, sensed her stepping away from me and approaching Shelly, putting a comfortable distance between herself and Stefan.
I wanted to scream for joy and laugh like a madwoman. Instead I had to settle for squeezing Danaus’s hand and biting my lower lip as I pulled myself into an upright position with my eyes still closed.
What? he demanded in my head.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, I denied, but the words came across as far too giddy.
You’re too damn happy about something.
Possibly that I’m still alive.
No. Tell me, or I’ll find it on my own, Mira, he said, threatening to go rummaging around in my thoughts. I wasn’t sure if he actually had the ability to do such a thing, but in my weakened state I wasn’t willing to put it to the test.
I can sense Cynnia over by Shelly, I admitted, pointedly rubbing my closed eyes.
Danaus remained silent for a couple seconds, then his hand tightened on mine in surprise. You can sense her? Without my help? Can you sense any others?
I don’t know. I’m too tired and this may be a temporary thing related to these specific circumstances. Then I opened my eyes and turned my head to look at the hunter, a grin growing on my pale, blood-streaked face. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could?
Twenty-Two
Bertha was covered in blood when she arrived at Ollantaytambo a few minutes later.
The nightwalker looked pale in the faint starlight, while her eyes glowed a deep blue.
Her pretty blond hair was stained with blood and her clothes had a variety of new rips and tears.
“We’re being attacked by the naturi. They’re trying to take the lodge from us!” she shouted before her feet touched the ground in front of Stefan. A second nightwalker landed directly behind her, looking the worse for wear. It was easy to surmise that the battle for the lodge was not going well.
With Danaus’s help, I pushed to my feet and walked over to where the three nightwalkers stood. “What’s happening?” I demanded, releasing my hold on his arm so that I was forced to stand on my own. I was weak, but I needed to muster what strength I had left for the fight we still had ahead of us.
“They started attacking shortly after we arrived at the lodge,” Bertha explained, her eyes briefly flitting to the bloodstain on the front of my shirt before meeting my gaze again.
“They’ve tried to set the place on fire twice and we’ve managed to stop it, but they’re wearing us down.”
“We have to abandon the lodge,” interjected the second nightwalker. “Sunrise is only a couple hours away and we have no way to secure it during the daylight hours. We’ll be slaughtered while we sleep.”
I glanced over at Danaus for a moment, knowing that he would be willing to defend me while I slept. He had protected me during the daylight hours in the past, but the illustrious hunter was no match for the horde of naturi waiting for us. That explained why only eight naturi had been sent to see what we were doing at Ollantaytambo. Their main concern was destroying the contingent sent to the lodge.
“We can’t pull back,” I said with a wave of my hand. “If we try to maintain any other location outside the Sacred Valley, we’ll never reach the top of Machu Picchu in time to stop the sacrifice. That’s their plan. To destroy us or delay us.”
“Can’t we use that one somehow?” Stefan asked with a jerk of his head toward Cynnia.
The young naturi took a step backward, hiding both of her bloodstained hands behind her back.
“She’s naturi?” Bertha asked. Her upper lip curled with the question, revealing a flash of her white fangs.
“She belongs to me,” I said, coming to standing between Bertha and Cynnia. “A bargaining chip I’m hoping to use at a later date.”
Bertha instantly backed off, taking a step back and holding up her hands, indicating that she had no disagreement with me. “You may be running out of time. Could it be time to use your bargaining chip?”
“I think she may come in handy,” I said, nodding, then looked over my shoulder at Stefan. “I need something from you to make this work.”
A cruel smile twisted his lips and he bowed his head. “What do you wish from me, great Elder?”
I matched his smile and bowed my head back to him. I had not meant to invoke my status as a member of the Coven, but if that’s how Stefan was going to be, I would play the part.
“I need you to pull a Stain on the lodge as a last resort.”
Stefan lurched a step backward, his hands balled into fists at his sides. Bertha also gasped, but I wasn’t surprised to see that the other nightwalker didn’t react. He was too young to know what a Stain was—I hadn’t heard of one being pulled in several centuries.
“Mira, I—”
“I know you know how to do it, Stefan. I studied under Jabari and followed the Coven for centuries. I can name every nightwalker that can perform a Stain. I would do it myself, but I know only the mechanics of it. I’ve never actually done it. You have, successfully.”
His hard jaw was clenched, which made his face appear as if chiseled from stone. “A last resort?” he demanded at last.
“I have a couple more tricks up my sleeve,” I said, flashing him a wry grin. “But we need to get going. We’re running out of night, and everything must be settled before the sun rises.”
“Then let us be gone,” he announced, sweeping one strong arm beneath my legs as he gathered me up into his arms.
“Not without Danaus!” I shouted, but we were already airborne. I tried to twist in Stefan’s grasp but he held me too tightly and the positioning was awkward.
“Don’t worry,” he chided, mocking my concern. “Bertha will see that the hunter arrives at the lodge safely.”
“And Shelly and Cynnia?”
“All will arrive safely just seconds behind us,” he said calmly as he sped through the night sky.
The air was cool. The wind whipped at our clothes and pulled at my hair as we crossed the vast black distance toward the lodge that was currently under siege.
“I’m surprised that you want the others along if you plan a Stain,” Stefan said after a moment of silence. “You seem to care for them. Or at the very least, seem to want them to stay alive a little while longer.”
“Precautions can be made so they aren’t harmed,” I said as I wrapped my arms more tightly around his neck and huddled against his larger body in an effort to avoid some of the wind. “It’s a risk, but we have no choice in this matter.”
“I hear some say that you have the same opinion of your place on the Coven,” he said, his French accent thickening as his anger bubbled to the surface. “That you had no choice in the matter.”
I snorted at him, drawing his dark silvery gaze down to my face. “I didn’t want it. I still don’t want it. I did what I thought I had to do at the time to protect our people. If I could hand the chair over to you right now, I would, but I can’t. Jabari would never allow it.”
“Word was that you and Jabari were…separated,” he said after a lengthy pause, as if searching for the right word to describe my current loathing for the Ancient.
“We are separated,’ yet the nightwalker has found a new use for me, as a member of the Coven. And there I will stay, on the Coven, until someone kills me or…” I paused, leaving the sentence floating in the air beside us.
“Or…?” Stefan prompted, his hands tightening on me. I had my answer. I needed to know how badly he wanted that seat on the Coven.
“Or kills Macaire,” I finished.
“Ahhh…so that is the way the wind blows.” Stefan chuckled, his grip loosening on me.
“Are you at all surprised?” I asked. The war between Jabari and Macaire seemed to have lasted for centuries. At least, it was in existence for as long as I had been a nightwalker. And in the end, maybe I was the cause of the rift between Macaire and Jabari. But for whatever the reason, the war would only end when one of the two nightwalkers was dead. My only goal when it came to the Coven was avoiding becoming a casualty of the war, like Tabor, the nightwalker whose seat I now possessed.
Our conversation ended as we approached the lodge in the darkness. Fires flickered around the building and in what appeared to be gardens that looked up at the great Incan city.
The Sanctuary Lodge would have been an exquisite oasis in the middle of the lush landscape that surrounded it, but in a matter of a few hours, we had reduced it to a battlefield.
“Drop me here!” I commanded as we flew close to the front of the building.
Stefan instantly obeyed as two naturi on butterfly wings streaked toward him, swords drawn. He didn’t need his hands full of me.
As I fell, I quickly pulled my short sword and a small knife, allowing me to slash through the first naturi I encountered while I hit the ground. I had killed two more when I felt Danaus hit the ground near me. We weren’t winning this battle. The naturi were too many and too strong. The power from the earth was making them faster, harder to kill than I remembered. We needed a new trick if we were going to finally end this.
Where’s Cynnia? I demanded of Danaus as I dodged a blow aimed to slice off my head.
Shelly is taking her inside.
Go get her. I need to talk to Rowe.
Danaus said nothing, but disappeared from my side, and was surprisingly replaced by Stefan.
“Rowe!” I shouted when I finished off the last naturi to attack me. Placing my hand on Stefan’s large chest, I forced him to take a step back. A second later a ring
of fire sprang up around the lodge, cutting through the garden and lighting up the gravel parking area. The power came easier than I had expected. Earth and soul energy flowed through me constantly now, causing the fire to burn hotter and brighter than it ever had. The naturi trapped within the ring were quickly slaughtered by my kind, but so were the few nightwalkers trapped outside the flames.
“I demand to speak to Rowe!” I shouted again. My voice rang out clear in the crisp mountain air now that the sound of battle had subsided.
“Right here,” the one-eyed naturi announced as he walked to the front of the crowd of naturi standing just beyond the boundary of the flames. The fire wouldn’t hold out those of the wind clan, since they could easily fly over the five-foot-high flames, but then, this was just a temporary truce so the two sides could make a few threats before getting back down to business.
“I thought I suggested that you should not bring your people to Machu Picchu,” I said, inwardly cursing Danaus and his slowness.
“The door will be opened,” Rowe said. “And we’ll be happy to finish you off tonight if you’d rather. You don’t think that a little fire will keep us away, do you?” As he spoke, two naturi with pale blond hair stepped forward and raised their hands. The flames around the lodge flickered and grew low, threatening to go out completely.
With a growl, I reached deep, pulling more of the earth’s energy into my body, slowing its flow back into the earth. The flames flared again, reaching back to their previous height and then higher by another foot. I could feel the two light clan naturi fighting me, pushing against the fires, struggling to extinguish it.
My eyes drifted shut and I dug deeper than I had before. The power of the earth swelled within me, combining with my natural ability to manipulate fire. Focusing all of my attention, I dropped the flames around the lodge for only a second. At the same time, I waved both my hands at the two blond naturi. The females with their thin lithe bodies and almond-shaped eyes instantly burst into flames, causing Rowe to shout and jump away from them.
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